Tag: spoken word

Grown Enough

pexels-pixabay-248021
Photo by Pixabay
pexels-pixabay-248021
Photo by Pixabay

She has a secret

that she just does not want to grow up

If she could just make it to 21

drink her liver half-dead

and tell Hennessy he’s the one

he makes her forget she’s had too much

but maybe she just hasn’t had enough

to make her realize that her friends are gone 

when nothing’s left

and the taste she feels on her tongue

is the Similac on her breath

telling her stomach to cough up the dance 

she just had with death 

Look sis, I know you think it cool

but your stomach’s not fit for this kind of food

and that boy on the corner ain’t in love with you

You are just a lot more convenient than McDonald’s

cause he can have his way with you

and you’re probably just hearing this for the first time

cause nobody’s ever told you it always hurts the first time

This

grown-up stuff

She said she just wants to be

grown enough

Her ambition is for time to sit still

Never reaching the point of crazy debt 

and large bills

If she could always stay somewhere between 

Dora the Explorer and pink heels

maybe this lump in her throat she would’ve never had to feel

If someone could have just told her that growing up is over-rated

And in this world without YAH you’re a nobody 

who’s never made it

Your childhood crying away cause you played it

Cause you rushed yourself into a place 

that’s not so puffed up

Trust little girl when I tell you

You’ll never quite be just

grown enough

Starving Contentment

tumblr_ma8s4s6utv1rfji3ko1_500

Like music swallows its bass inside the belly of the loud speakers their stomachs growl,
but they ain’t really hungry….
they just come to see what all the commotion is like….
they wanna know what all this poetry stuff is but……
they ain’t really hungry……
they just wanna see how pretty her pain is.

Revolutionary Youth

tumblr_lnrw6r2DOr1qmnxqeo1_500

 

I notice that young people like to engage into conscious conversation nowadays….
a mind heavy with questions a…..
bed of regret too slippery to hold onto any longer we linger on the brink of activism and righteous revolution but…..
like wild bulls in a net we are caught ironically by the same thirst for consciousness…….
breathtaking words and artificial intelligence that sound almost like life….
a quick fix of metaphors glossed over with the shine of illuminated intelligence
a mere ignorance in disguise
it is my hope
that before we start to think
we may first search the graveyard of our ancestors closets where we buried our minds
because it is evident….
that though we are inebriated of the euphoria of information….
we have yet to be informed.

Cousin

black-girl

She walks but she sleeps…
she sleeps her way down 35th street,

Chicago’s State Streets.
The project life booming
lights
camera
action,
whistles blowing the street life calling
undressing her body with its eyes
for she blooms into this new body just as suddenly as the sky rises
she rises
into womanhood…….
since that first flow of blood sent hormones racing against waves she sleeps
with those waves
feelings of pretend love from the streets
swallow that pill of ignorance,
dazed in ecstasy
she sleeps.

4e1c472d60936.preview-300

 
Hennessy bottles, homo sags and Baphomet signs,

he sleeps
getting this paper either on the basketball court or the recording studio he stays true to the streets, so he thinks.
Blind hormones and rap songz creating another generation of sleepers
too bad he doesn’t know
that by the age of 10 he’s already red listed as one of NYPD’s takers.
polished A-k 47’s eagerly await just 8 more years until it’s their turn to accidentally
shoot away what consciousness he’s got left.
But he sleeps
and she sleeps
living dreams to the fullest only to never realize that it was just a dream
living life to the fullest only to die
wake up and not live.
never giving ourselves the opportunity to realize that sleep is just the cousin of death.
Because the almighty never sleeps

and his righteous angels you see they don’t sleep
and the messiah died
dying physically
only to wake up from this sort of temporary sleep because he was ordained to never sleep again.
cause you can only live once…..physically
your body’s life fading away in the distance
rats and insects tearing away at past dreams of disobedience
but will you ever wake up from this past slumber and really live?
or will you sleep,
and sleep,
and sleep…
to become more acquainted
with the cousin of death.

The Relationship – My Love Affair with Poetry

024325

Smitten.

You know the feeling

that refreshing taste of newness

the aching agony that occurs merely from having to wait

until you can see him again

the love sick hurricane in your stomach

just to hear him say your name

the sweat that hides itself beneath your fingertips

when he’s around

the sudden sense of laughter

upon seeing his face

because you know like he does

the secret that lets its guard down

upon the blinking of your eyelids

the pace of a heartbeat

when a word of kindness escapes his lips

you know it

the feeling of fresh love

like the aroma of gourmet coffee

like when the caffeine simply invites you

like the pupils of his eyes when they mentally undress you

because the kindness pouring forth from these thoughts

is strangely exhilarating

the feeling that reminds you

why you were ever single,

the masculinity of a voice

strong, and incredibly calm

whatever I could do to convince poetry that it was necessary that we speak

was a chance to breathe,

for he was a ventilator

and I just needed air.

so I rushed home just to grab a book

or pry open my diary

and hold his thoughts in my hand until my paper

bled its first period.

Deeper.

Over time, we got closer and I became more open

I grew out of childhood

and demanded more attention from my lover

I became jealous and obsessive with my need to be seen with him

in the classroom, in the library, and late into Open mic nights

I ate up words with the speed of speech

and wrapped alliterations

around alphabets

like it was oxygen.

Smoking lyric

and sipping on rhythm slow

like the stride

of a black man

Commitment.

It was no longer convenient to lock me away,

cover me under the flap of notebooks and journals,

it was time to come out of the closet.

I tried to stay focused really,

but paper had proved to be too cluttered

and too slow for us,

too polluted to allow the thing we’d attempted through privacy

to ever grow into what I needed

How could I allow our particular version of intimacy

to be buried by the commas and blue lines

and falling parenthesis that make up the creative world?

After all, we were in love and as such it was time for marriage

and the introduction of this relationship

into the mainstream

The way these words were so finely crafted

almost as if they wrapped themselves around my lips

and took trips inside my memories

Euphoria

any feeling this good has got to be a sin…isn’t it?

No,

What I’d stumbled upon was a gift and no,

this was not a transgression of law

this

was

love.